Maintaining Health During The Holiday Season

Avoid sugary drinks

The sugary hot cocoas and lattes are absolutely loaded with refined sugars. It’s best to avoid these beverages, and instead, make your own lattes at home using ingredients of your choosing.

Keep away from the snack bowl

Bowls of peanuts, pretzels, and other snack foods are common at most holiday parties. It can feel instinctive to grab these treats as they often seem like healthier choices compared to other delicacies like cakes and chocolate chips. Yet, these seemingly healthy snacks are best to be left alone. Most holiday snacks contain inflammatory oils, such as soybean and canola, and pro-inflammatory grains, such as wheat. Hence, it’s advisable to keep scanning the food table for safer choices.

Go as spray free / organic as possible

If you are hosting a holiday party, you gain control over the food choices and food quality.
Make use of this opportunity and choose to spread health-love to your family and friends. You can cook dishes using spray free or organic fruits and vegetables. Also, instead of serving them conventional factory-farmed meat, you can opt for local, grass fed and finished meats. You can use beef that’s grass-fed or chicken, ham, and turkey that’s pasture-raised.

Lay off the spreads and sauces

Most people love to drizzle their food with spreads and sauces. However, these fancy sauces and spreads can be loaded with ingredients including wheat flour and refined sugar.
So, optional would be to just skip the sauces and spreads however with it being the holidays and all moderation is also a great idea.

Try grain-free desserts

When you are the host of a holiday party or bringing a dish to a party hosted by someone else, you can prepare delicious desserts using grain-free and gluten-free flours such as coconut, hazelnut, almond, and tapioca. Your allergy-friendly desserts will help everyone keep up with their healthy eating habits without compromising on their desire to eat delicious treats.

Don’t make holidays all about the food

Instead of worrying just about eating, you can focus on enjoying and relaxing with your family and friends. Stress is definitely not good for your health. Also, healthy eating need not be a source of stress and anxiety for you, at least not during the holiday season.
So, make a conscious effort to just relax and enjoy yourself.

Ask your health-buddy to accompany you

It can become a lot easier for you to stick to your health goals when you have a friend who follows the same healthy habits. Find someone who is willing to accompany you, so that you both can encourage each other to make healthy food choices and stick to your goals.

Practice moderation

There is no doubt that high-sugar, high-fat foods can be inflammatory. Similarly, even alcohol can lead to a harmful effect on your health by putting more burden on your liver and digestive organs. So, indulge responsibly and practice moderation if you cannot resist the desire to eat your favourite delicacies.
As far as alcohol intake is concerned, you can look for cocktails prepared with anti-inflammatory and gut-healing ingredients such as ginger, kombucha, and coconut kefir.

Keep moving

Our busy schedules can make it tempting for us to put the self-care activities such as exercising on the back burner while we are enjoying our holidays. However, exercising is an essential part of keeping healthy. It is also necessary for preventing weight gain and inflammation. Workouts like tai chi and yoga can be powerful stress relievers as well as inflammation calmers. Make sure you keep aside some time from your activities during the holidays for these exercises so that you do not find yourself having strayed too far from your health goals once you return to your routine.

Pre-load on safe and natural medicines

When you know you are likely to end up eating a lot or eating something that may not agree with your health needs, you can consider taking probiotics, digestive enzymes, turmeric, or other anti-inflammatory nutrients before the holiday season begins and continue using them even thereafter.